Below are key articles on this site. For other topics, search using the categories list to the right or the search function at the top. Below this list are bios of the earthDECKS team.

Climate Change
From Climate Change to Global Security
       Boston-Cambridge, and Climate Change
       Climate Interactive: Visual Modeling

Problem-Solving Ecosystems to Tackle Complexity
Complex Systems Problems
       The Plasticene
       Game-Changing B Corps & Benefit Corporations
       Massachusetts Institute of Technology Initiatives

Collaborative Intelligence
       Berkeley Innovation: crossing scales & disciplines
       The Internet of Things (IoT) & Collaborative IQ

Games and Media for Learning
       Monopoly, a Vision Flipped
       Innovation via Next Gen Social Networks
       From World Game to Future Games

Mapping and Visualization
       Learning Media: Gaming the Future
       Using GIS for Problem-Focused Mapping
       The Worldmap Platform

Saving Our Oceans
       Enshrouded in Plastic
       Ocean Debris Network (OD net)
       Global Ocean Sensing
       Ocean Ingenuity
       Oceans: Measuring Planet Health

Smart Cities
       Pioneering Urban Futures
       Resilient Cities Partner Platform
       VERGE

Strategies for Game*Changing

Ray Martin focuses on earthDECKS Strategy Development. He has extensive experience in the semiconductor and energy industries. As CEO of Alternative Lighting Technologies he pioneered new breakthroughs in LED lighting power electronics. At Asyst Technologies, he introduced new products that helped revenue grow from $22 million to $492 million in 5 years. As Asyst Technologies further grew to a $600 million public company, he ran the intellectual property program, guiding engineers in filing patent applications. Ray worked for Intel for 15 years, primarily in Intel’s development facility where the processes were developed to manufacture Intel’s advanced microprocessors. Ray Martin has a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and an MS degree in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University. Ray serves on the board of directors of Quantum Materials Corporation, a supplier of quantum dots for applications such as energy efficient television displays, LED lighting, and solar photovoltaic cells and was Chair of the Board of Sustainable Silicon Valley. He is committed to whole systems design and sustainability.

Zann Gill is Founder of earthDECKS. While a graduate student (M. Arch. Architecture Harvard), Zann worked with Buckminster Fuller, whose concept for World Game preceded the public internet and mobile computing, inspiring earthDECKS as “the neXt game” to harness next generation social networks, the public Internet, and mobile apps toward global problem-solving. Her entry to the international smart city competition Kawasaki: Information City of the 21st Century tied with Matsushita (now Panasonic) for First Prize and won the Award of the Mayor of Kawasaki, placing higher than entries of other large Japanese corporations, including Shimizu and Taisei. She proposed an IIS (Intelligent Integrating System) to harness distributed nodes/ devices to aggregate and make sense of the data they deliver. This work initiated her recognition of need for the discipline of collaborative intelligence (next generation crowd-sourcing and social networks for problem-solving). earthDECKS draws on the analog of card games, but in this “deck of cards” each card is a knowledge resource in a distributed knowledge network. She holds several SaaS patents and has also won awards for her film scripts.

Claudia Brenner brings Business Strategy and Marketing (MBA) together with Information Visualization and Design, and User Experience, leveraging technology into digital solutions and supporting organizations, which she summarizes as Biz + Viz. She has a BS in Life Sciences (Pennsylvania State University, pre-med major) and MBA in Marketing and International Business from the Cox School of Business (Southern Methodist University).

She served for five years as Chair and Vice Chair for BayCHI (Bay Area Society for Computer Human Interaction). Her diverse career with Fortune 500, mid-size, and start-up companies includes work as a Senior Product Manager for Kaiser Permanente, Vice President of Marketing and Services for FutureLink, Senior Manager, Global e-Business for Applied Biosystems, Business Strategist for Scient Corporation, Product Manager for Oracle, sales and marketing for IBM, and Business Strategist and Information Architect for Atomic Strategic Design.

Currently, Claudia’s focus is visualizing systems and using systems design to solve complex challenges at the core – emanating from her experience creating long-lasting digital solutions: mobile apps, global cross-enterprise portals, and online businesses for Fortune 1000, medium-sized, and start-up companies delivering integrated complex information systems globally, across and between enterprise(s), e.g. mergers, business process integration, portal platforms, mobile applications, innovation center, and mission control performance dashboards.

Federating Knowledge

Jack Park, Software Developer, worked at SRI International and edited the book XMLTopicMaps. He worked with Doug Engelbert and developed the Knowledge Garden to evolve and extend Doug Engelbart’s concept of a Dynamic Knowledge Repository, enabling communities of practice, which Engelbart called Networked Improvement Communities, to share knowledge via tagging, annotating, linking, and exchange. Knowledge gardening employs artificial intelligence concepts for knowledge organization and knowledge representation. Jack is developing an open source Watson-like agent system on his TopicQuests Foundation platform and working with the company KYNDI on their collaborative knowledge platform.

Game*Changing Teamstorms to define the neXt game

Dennis Britton focuses on discovering and augmenting new smart nodes in the earthDECKS innovation network. He brings extensive experience to guide innovation, increase effectiveness of technology development projects, lead lean canvas strategic visioning, product design alignment, feature prioritization, feature deconstruction and prototype construction. He’s seen human brilliance gone awry in many software development projects, large and small, which inspired him to develop turnaround  and disruptive innovation strategies for software development teams. He combines diverse experience with large companies (APPLE, Cisco, GE, HP, VISA) with leadership in entrepreneurial and agile communities, and his passion for start-ups and disruptive innovation.

Augmented, Immersive & Virtual Reality, Animation and Film

Dr. Julian Gómez, immersive VR technology expert, has pioneered new applications of immersive VR and 3D computer graphics. He was one of the first to recognize the potential of 3D computer graphics to serve as a platform for information management and knowledge integration. He has focused on how 3D graphics can support information systems architecture, ranging from web based solutions, CAD/PLM/KM to standards development/compliance and APIs. The virtual reality fish (credit: OVA Ltd. Swimarium VR) might then have associated links.

With experience in both academia and industry, and a focus on cross-disciplinary research and development, Julian has worked at NASA JPL’s Computer Graphics Laboratory, co-founded several start-ups, worked at NASA Ames Research Center at RIACS (Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science), Macromedia, APPLE, LEGO, and Sun.

While Chief Scientist at LEGO A/S Julian pioneered the use of relational databases for managing 3D information. He organized and chaired the NASA Virtual Iron Bird Workshop to push the frontiers of cross-disciplinary R&D for knowledge management. Julian has an AB with honors from UC Berkeley, and a PhD from Ohio State University. In his dissertation he generalized the science for how computer animation was done at the time. He is a member of SIGGRAPH, Web3D Consortium, the Computer Graphics Pioneers and former program chair for the Euphrat Museum of Art.

Many organizations are working on complex sustainability problems. Each has its own knowledge base. Often they overlap but do not match. Julian is developing the information architecture for coordinated solutions that leverage existing technology and knowledge. Existing semantic and graph database technologies are currently used to build comprehensive knowledge bases to enable solution development. A knowledge base of the scope that earthDECKS envisages requires a more innovative approach to knowledge management that can harness advanced viewing and interaction technology, i.e. VR and AR. Julian is designing a knowledge base structure that incorporates existing knowledge with mechanisms to incorporate new knowledge, and capacity to use VR/AR to manage and analyze the contents of that knowledge base. This approach blends well with film-making, using a common technology base for content creation and the documentary subject. It bypasses errors created by translating from one medium to another.

Alex Korolko, Moody Studio filmmaker, is a Game*Changer who films a range of game-changing topics. He earned degrees in electrical engineering and aeronautical engineering in the Ukraine before shifting to filmmaking and new media, where he harnesses his diverse skills, from animation to cinematography, from concept development to music composition and virtual/ augmented reality. He has diverse experience as a videographer, animator, editor, cameraman, and director on TV, video productions and live broadcast.

Mapping, Visualization & Interactive Visualization Media

Assen Assenov is developing Mapping and Visualization to support collaboration. He holds degrees in Urban Design from Harvard GSD and Architecture from the University of Rome, La Sapienza and brings experience in urban design, facilities management and architecture, with experience in both the private and public sectors. He applied his GIS mapping expertise to document APPLE facilities in Cupertino, develop with ESRI support for ArcView on the Macintosh platform, document NASA Ames facilities at Moffett Field and co-develop a proposal to establish at Moffett Field the campus of the first American Space University. Working on conversion of the Naval Air Station sparked his interest in developing mapping and visualization tools to support effective collaboration.

Massimiliano Roda is an Italian Architect and Urbanist specializing in Geographic Information Systems, environmental planning, and urban green infrastructure. He works with the University of Rome, La Sapienza, developing models for smart cities and sustainable urban transportation infrastructure using progressive GIS mapping solutions.

Rotating Leadership: team sessions